OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
EGFC: Evolving Gaussian Fuzzy Classifier from Never-Ending Semi-Supervised Data Streams -- With Application to Power Quality Disturbance Detection and Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2020
Year: 2020

Power-quality disturbances lead to several drawbacks such as limitation of the production capacity, increased line and equipment currents, and consequent ohmic losses; higher operating temperatures, premature faults, reduction of life expectancy of machines, malfunction of equipment, and unplanned outages. Real-time detection and classification of disturbances are deemed essential to industry standards. We propose an Evolving Gaussian Fuzzy Classification (EGFC) framework for semi-supervised disturbance detection and classification combined with a hybrid Hodrick-Prescott and Discrete-Fourier-Transform attribute-extraction method applied over a landmark window of voltage waveforms. Disturbances such as spikes, notching, harmonics, and oscillatory transient are considered. Different from other monitoring systems, which require offline training of models based on a limited amount of data and occurrences, the proposed online data-stream-based EGFC method is able to learn disturbance patterns autonomously from never-ending data streams by adapting the parameters and structure of a fuzzy rule base on the fly. Moreover, the fuzzy model obtained is linguistically interpretable, which improves model acceptability. We show encouraging classification results.
A Philosophy of Data
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2020
Year: 2020

We argue that while this discourse on data ethics is of critical importance, it is missing one fundamental point: If more and more efforts in business, government, science, and our daily lives are data-driven, we should pay more attention to what exactly we are driven by. Therefore, we need more debate on what fundamental properties constitute data. In the first section of the paper, we work from the fundamental properties necessary for statistical computation to a definition of statistical data. We define a statistical datum as the coming together of substantive and numerical properties and differentiate between qualitative and quantitative data. Subsequently, we qualify our definition by arguing that for data to be practically useful, it needs to be commensurable in a manner that reveals meaningful differences that allow for the generation of relevant insights through statistical methodologies. In the second section, we focus on what our conception of data can contribute to the discourse on data ethics and beyond. First, we hold that the need for useful data to be commensurable rules out an understanding of properties as fundamentally unique or equal. Second, we argue that practical concerns lead us to increasingly standardize how we operationalize a substantive property; in other words, how we formalize the relationship between the substantive and numerical properties of data. Thereby, we also standardize the interpretation of a property. With our increasing reliance on data and data technologies, these two characteristics of data affect our collective conception of reality. Statistical data's exclusion of the fundamentally unique and equal influences our perspective on the world, and the standardization of substantive properties can be viewed as profound ontological practice, entrenching ever more pervasive interpretations of phenomena in our everyday lives.
Adaptive Interaction Fusion Networks for Fake News Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

The majority of existing methods for fake news detection universally focus on learning and fusing various features for detection. However, the learning of various features is independent, which leads to a lack of cross-interaction fusion between features on social media, especially between posts and comments. Generally, in fake news, there are emotional associations and semantic conflicts between posts and comments. How to represent and fuse the cross-interaction between both is a key challenge. In this paper, we propose Adaptive Interaction Fusion Networks (AIFN) to fulfill cross-interaction fusion among features for fake news detection. In AIFN, to discover semantic conflicts, we design gated adaptive interaction networks (GAIN) to capture adaptively similar semantics and conflicting semantics between posts and comments. To establish feature associations, we devise semantic-level fusion self-attention networks (SFSN) to enhance semantic correlations and fusion among features. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets, i.e., RumourEval and PHEME, demonstrate that AIFN achieves the state-of-the-art performance and boosts accuracy by more than 2.05% and 1.90%, respectively.
Example-Guided Image Synthesis across Arbitrary Scenes using Masked Spatial-Channel Attention and Self-Supervision
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Example-guided image synthesis has recently been attempted to synthesize an image from a semantic label map and an exemplary image. In the task, the additional exemplar image provides the style guidance that controls the appearance of the synthesized output. Despite the controllability advantage, the existing models are designed on datasets with specific and roughly aligned objects. In this paper, we tackle a more challenging and general task, where the exemplar is an arbitrary scene image that is semantically different from the given label map. To this end, we first propose a Masked Spatial-Channel Attention (MSCA) module which models the correspondence between two arbitrary scenes via efficient decoupled attention. Next, we propose an end-to-end network for joint global and local feature alignment and synthesis. Finally, we propose a novel self-supervision task to enable training. Experiments on the large-scale and more diverse COCO-stuff dataset show significant improvements over the existing methods. Moreover, our approach provides interpretability and can be readily extended to other content manipulation tasks including style and spatial interpolation or extrapolation.
On the Relevance of Wait-free Coordination Algorithms in Shared-Memory HPC:The Global Virtual Time Case
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2020
Year: 2020

High-performance computing on shared-memory/multi-core architectures could suffer from non-negligible performance bottlenecks due to coordination algorithms, which are nevertheless necessary to ensure the overall correctness and/or to support the execution of housekeeping operations, e.g. to recover computing resources (e.g., memory). Although more complex in design/development, a paradigm switch from classical coordination algorithms to wait-free ones could significantly boost the performance of HPC applications. In this paper we explore the relevance of this paradigm shift in shared-memory architectures, by focusing on the context of Parallel Discrete Event Simulation, where the Global Virtual Time (GVT) represents a fundamental coordination algorithm. It allows to compute the lower bound on the value of the logical time passed through by all the entities participating in a parallel/distributed computation. Hence it can be used to discriminate what events belong to the past history of the computation---thus being considered as committed---and allowing for memory recovery (e.g. of obsolete logs that were taken in order to support state recoverability) and non-revokable operations (e.g. I/O). We compare the reference (blocking) algorithm for shared memory, the one proposed by by Fujimoto and Hybinette \cite{Fuj97}, with an innovative wait-free implementation, emphasizing on what design choices must be made to enforce this paradigm shift, and what are the performance implications of removing critical sections in coordination algorithms.
Deep Learning at the Physical Layer: System Challenges and Applications to 5G and Beyond
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2020
Year: 2020

The unprecedented requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT) have made fine-grained optimization of spectrum resources an urgent necessity. Thus, designing techniques able to extract knowledge from the spectrum in real time and select the optimal spectrum access strategy accordingly has become more important than ever. Moreover, 5G and beyond (5GB) networks will require complex management schemes to deal with problems such as adaptive beam management and rate selection. Although deep learning (DL) has been successful in modeling complex phenomena, commercially-available wireless devices are still very far from actually adopting learning-based techniques to optimize their spectrum usage. In this paper, we first discuss the need for real-time DL at the physical layer, and then summarize the current state of the art and existing limitations. We conclude the paper by discussing an agenda of research challenges and how DL can be applied to address crucial problems in 5GB networks.
Toward a Methodological Knowledge for Service-Oriented Development Based on OPEN Meta Model
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2020
Year: 2020

Situational method engineering uses a repository of reusable method fragments that are derived from existing software development methodologies and industrial best practices to simplify the construction of any project-specific software development methodology aligned with specific characteristics of a project at hand. In this respect, OPEN is a well-established, standardized and popular approach for situational method engineering. It has a large repository of reusable method fragments called OPF that method engineers can select and assemble them according to the requirements of a project to construct a new project-specific software development methodology. In this position paper, we present the basic concepts and foundations of OPEN and argue for an urgent need for new extensions to OPEN and its repository in support of service-oriented software development practices. Keywords: OPEN Process Framework, OPF Repository, OPEN Meta-Model, Situational Method Engineering, Method Fragments, Service-Oriented Software Development
Cloud Migration Methodologies Preliminary Findings
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2020
Year: 2020

Research around cloud computing has largely been dedicated to ad-dressing technical aspects associated with utilizing cloud services, surveying critical success factors for the cloud adoption, and opinions about its impact on IT functions. Nevertheless, the aspect of process models for the cloud migration has been slow in pace. Several methodologies have been proposed by both aca-demia and industry for moving legacy applications to the cloud. This paper pre-sents a criteria-based appraisal of such existing methodologies. The results of the analysis highlight the strengths and weaknesses of these methodologies and can be used by cloud service consumers for comparing and selecting the most appropriate ones that fit specific migration scenarios. The paper also suggests research opportunities to improve the status quo. Keywords Cloud Migration; Legacy Applications; Cloud Migration Method-ology, Evaluation Framework
Variable Decomposition for Prophet Inequalities and Optimal Ordering
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2020
Year: 2020

We introduce a new decomposition technique for random variables that maps a generic instance of the prophet inequalities problem to a new instance where all but a constant number of variables have a tractable structure that we refer to as $(\varepsilon, δ)$-smallness. Using this technique, we make progress on several outstanding problems in the area: - We show that, even in the case of non-identical distributions, it is possible to achieve (arbitrarily close to) the optimal approximation ratio of $β\approx 0.745$ as long as we are allowed to remove a small constant number of distributions. - We show that for frequent instances of prophet inequalities (where each distribution reoccurs some number of times), it is possible to achieve the optimal approximation ratio of $β$ (improving over the previous best-known bound of $0.738$). - We give a new, simpler proof of Kertz's optimal approximation guarantee of $β\approx 0.745$ for prophet inequalities with i.i.d. distributions. The proof is primal-dual and simultaneously produces upper and lower bounds. - Using this decomposition in combination with a novel convex programming formulation, we construct the first Efficient PTAS for the Optimal Ordering problem.
Dependency-Based Neural Representations for Classifying Lines of Programs
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2020
Year: 2020

We investigate the problem of classifying a line of program as containing a vulnerability or not using machine learning. Such a line-level classification task calls for a program representation which goes beyond reasoning from the tokens present in the line. We seek a distributed representation in a latent feature space which can capture the control and data dependencies of tokens appearing on a line of program, while also ensuring lines of similar meaning have similar features. We present a neural architecture, Vulcan, that successfully demonstrates both these requirements. It extracts contextual information about tokens in a line and inputs them as Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) paths to a bi-directional LSTM with an attention mechanism. It concurrently represents the meanings of tokens in a line by recursively embedding the lines where they are most recently defined. In our experiments, Vulcan compares favorably with a state-of-the-art classifier, which requires significant preprocessing of programs, suggesting the utility of using deep learning to model program dependence information.
A Mathematical Programming approach to Binary Supervised Classification with Label Noise
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

In this paper we propose novel methodologies to construct Support Vector Machine -based classifiers that takes into account that label noises occur in the training sample. We propose different alternatives based on solving Mixed Integer Linear and Non Linear models by incorporating decisions on relabeling some of the observations in the training dataset. The first method incorporates relabeling directly in the SVM model while a second family of methods combines clustering with classification at the same time, giving rise to a model that applies simultaneously similarity measures and SVM. Extensive computational experiments are reported based on a battery of standard datasets taken from UCI Machine Learning repository, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
The Effect of Video Playback Speed on Perception of Technical Skill in Robotic Surgery
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2020
Year: 2020

Purpose: Previous research has shown that obtaining non-expert crowd evaluations of surgical performances concords with the gold standard of expert surgeon review, and that faster playback speed increases ratings for videos of higher-skilled surgeons in laparoscopic simulation. The aim of this research is to extend this investigation to real surgeries that use non-expert crowd evaluations. We address two questions (1) whether crowds award more favorable ratings to videos shown at increased playback speeds, and (2) if crowd evaluations of the first minute of a surgical procedure differ from crowd evaluations of the entire performance. Methods: A set of 56 videos of practicing surgeons were used to evaluate the technical skill of the surgeons at each video playback speed used for the first minute of the previously rated performance, using the GEARS assessment criteria. Results: Crowds on average did rate videos higher as playback speed was increased. This effect was observed for both proficient and expert surgeons. Each increase in the playback speed by 0.8x was associated with, on average, a 0.16-point increase in the GEARS score for expert surgeons and a 0.27-point increase in GEARS score for proficient surgeons, with both groups being perceived as obtaining relatively equal skill at the fastest playback speed. It was also found that 22 out of the 56 surgeons were perceived to be significantly different in skill when just viewing the first minute of performance. Conclusion: The observed increase in skill ratings with video playback speed replicates findings for laparoscopy in [2], and extends to real robotic surgeries. Furthermore, the large differences in skill labels when comparing the first minute of surgery to the entire 15 minute video warrants further investigation into how much perceived skill ratings vary in time (sub-task level) vs. summative metrics (task level).
MT-Clinical BERT: Scaling Clinical Information Extraction with Multitask Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

Clinical notes contain an abundance of important but not-readily accessible information about patients. Systems to automatically extract this information rely on large amounts of training data for which their exists limited resources to create. Furthermore, they are developed dis-jointly; meaning that no information can be shared amongst task-specific systems. This bottle-neck unnecessarily complicates practical application, reduces the performance capabilities of each individual solution and associates the engineering debt of managing multiple information extraction systems. We address these challenges by developing Multitask-Clinical BERT: a single deep learning model that simultaneously performs eight clinical tasks spanning entity extraction, PHI identification, language entailment and similarity by sharing representations amongst tasks. We find our single system performs competitively with all state-the-art task-specific systems while also benefiting from massive computational benefits at inference.
GGDs: Graph Generating Dependencies
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2020
Year: 2020

We propose Graph Generating Dependencies (GGDs), a new class of dependencies for property graphs. Extending the expressivity of state of the art constraint languages, GGDs can express both tuple- and equality-generating dependencies on property graphs, both of which find broad application in graph data management. We provide the formal definition of GGDs, analyze the validation problem for GGDs, and demonstrate the practical utility of GGDs.
Industrial Robot Grasping with Deep Learning using a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2020
Year: 2020

Universal grasping of a diverse range of previously unseen objects from heaps is a grand challenge in e-commerce order fulfillment, manufacturing, and home service robotics. Recently, deep learning based grasping approaches have demonstrated results that make them increasingly interesting for industrial deployments. This paper explores the problem from an automation systems point-of-view. We develop a robotics grasping system using Dex-Net, which is fully integrated at the controller level. Two neural networks are deployed on a novel industrial AI hardware acceleration module close to a PLC with a power footprint of less than 10 W for the overall system. The software is tightly integrated with the hardware allowing for fast and efficient data processing and real-time communication. The success rate of grasping an object form a bin is up to 95 percent with more than 350 picks per hour, if object and receptive bins are in close proximity. The system was presented at the Hannover Fair 2019 (world s largest industrial trade fair) and other events, where it performed over 5,000 grasps per event.
Yoga-82: A New Dataset for Fine-grained Classification of Human Poses
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Human pose estimation is a well-known problem in computer vision to locate joint positions. Existing datasets for the learning of poses are observed to be not challenging enough in terms of pose diversity, object occlusion, and viewpoints. This makes the pose annotation process relatively simple and restricts the application of the models that have been trained on them. To handle more variety in human poses, we propose the concept of fine-grained hierarchical pose classification, in which we formulate the pose estimation as a classification task, and propose a dataset, Yoga-82, for large-scale yoga pose recognition with 82 classes. Yoga-82 consists of complex poses where fine annotations may not be possible. To resolve this, we provide hierarchical labels for yoga poses based on the body configuration of the pose. The dataset contains a three-level hierarchy including body positions, variations in body positions, and the actual pose names. We present the classification accuracy of the state-of-the-art convolutional neural network architectures on Yoga-82. We also present several hierarchical variants of DenseNet in order to utilize the hierarchical labels.
Automatic exposure selection and fusion for high-dynamic-range photography via smartphones
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

High-dynamic-range (HDR) photography involves fusing a bracket of images taken at different exposure settings in order to compensate for the low dynamic range of digital cameras such as the ones used in smartphones. In this paper, a method for automatically selecting the exposure settings of such images is introduced based on the camera characteristic function. In addition, a new fusion method is introduced based on an optimization formulation and weighted averaging. Both of these methods are implemented on a smartphone platform as an HDR app to demonstrate the practicality of the introduced methods. Comparison results with several existing methods are presented indicating the effectiveness as well as the computational efficiency of the introduced solution.
OL4EL: Online Learning for Edge-cloud Collaborative Learning on Heterogeneous Edges with Resource Constraints
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2020
Year: 2020

Distributed machine learning (ML) at network edge is a promising paradigm that can preserve both network bandwidth and privacy of data providers. However, heterogeneous and limited computation and communication resources on edge servers (or edges) pose great challenges on distributed ML and formulate a new paradigm of Edge Learning (i.e. edge-cloud collaborative machine learning). In this article, we propose a novel framework of 'learning to learn' for effective Edge Learning (EL) on heterogeneous edges with resource constraints. We first model the dynamic determination of collaboration strategy (i.e. the allocation of local iterations at edge servers and global aggregations on the Cloud during collaborative learning process) as an online optimization problem to achieve the tradeoff between the performance of EL and the resource consumption of edge servers. Then, we propose an Online Learning for EL (OL4EL) framework based on the budget-limited multi-armed bandit model. OL4EL supports both synchronous and asynchronous learning patterns, and can be used for both supervised and unsupervised learning tasks. To evaluate the performance of OL4EL, we conducted both real-world testbed experiments and extensive simulations based on docker containers, where both Support Vector Machine and K-means were considered as use cases. Experimental results demonstrate that OL4EL significantly outperforms state-of-the-art EL and other collaborative ML approaches in terms of the trade-off between learning performance and resource consumption.